


the truth universally acknowledged

by snsk



Series: 19th century love song [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 1895, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:02:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7291483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snsk/pseuds/snsk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the summer of 1895, Martyn Lester is handed a certain possession of his brother's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the truth universally acknowledged

It was the summer of 1895 that I received a visit from my younger brother, Philip, affectionately known to all as Phil. He came bearing news of a move to the outskirts of the city - "London has tired us out," said he, laughing, and made me and my wife, Cornelia, promise to visit as soon as they had got settled in. Us of course referred to fellow bachelor Daniel Howell, who had been his friend and close companion since their University days.

"And one last thing," he said, and picked up the tin box he had carried under his arm to the house and carefully set down beside him on the settee. "A favour I must ask of you."

"Name it," said I.

"It is the matter of this tin box," he explained. "It is exceedingly precious to us both. In the stressful business of moving, I would hate to see it go missing due to our carelessness, or some stranger's eyes peeking curiously at it. I would feel much safer in my mind if it was here with you, and I would come to collect it in a few weeks."

"But of course," I said at once, and he handed the object over quite carefully. "I shall guard it with my life," I reassured him.

He let out a chuckle. "I hope it will hardly come to that, although if ever need be, do choose life. Its contents are not of much worth at all."

"Why, you have just said it contains things exceedingly precious," I objected.

"That they are," said he with a smile. "Exceedingly precious, and generally worthless, and utterly irreplaceable. Now I must be getting back. Cornelia, my dear."

Once he had taken his leave of us, I placed the tin box at the bottom of my wardrobe. It would lie safely there, and I thought no more of it, busy about my daily business and my charming wife, who, it seemed to me, grew more lovely with every passing day.

Three weeks or so passed hence, and I received a telegram from my brother:

Will come over Sunday for tea & box. One thing - do open and check whether a certain broken pocket watch is there? Dan worries he may have misplaced it.  
PHIL

I set it down and went to my room. The box lay there, unassuming. It was the kind used for chocolate, and in fact, worn and the colours faded as they were, one could still see the manufacturer's emblem. It was bound about with some string, easily enough untied, and so I opened the cover to see an assortment of objects. A sheaf of envelopes, tied up, an old olive glove, a pen, and a ha'penny, threaded through with some ribbon, were amongst the knickknacks I observed. The pocket watch was easy enough to spot - its hand frozen perpetually at 7:21 pm - and I was about to head down and answer my brother's telegram when a piece of paper, folded once and not quite right at that, caught my eye. Noticing the word _Dearest_ , my interest was immediately piqued.

I had never known my brother, calm, placid, inscrutable Phil, to show romantic affection for anyone before - the person he was most comfortable with was Dan, his closest companion. He had not spoken to us of any lover, of any tragically ended courtship, and yet it was unquestionably his handwriting. _Dearest_ \- the word had cinched it for me; a better man than I would have refrained, but I unfolded it with care, only meaning to skim through - perhaps a name, a phrase I could recognise - I ended up reading it in its entirety, and now I reproduce it for you.

*******

Dearest ( _it read_ ),

As I transcribe this you are snoring across the side of our armchair. Your hair is falling over your forehead; high time for a visit to the Barber. You are tired out from your day, but especially from your meeting with Mr Saget - he has been haranguing you about his daughter Tilly again, you told me upon reaching home. But of course she is of marriageable age. The meeting with the photographers will be next Monday, and he will glare at me throughout, no doubt certain of my designs in keeping you away from Tilly and your company all to myself. Well, he is quite right at that, but little does he know what sort of your _company_ I desire.

There is nothing to it - one day we will live in that little house we oft speak of, my darling. There will be vines creeping up the sides and a spaniel to greet us with a joyful bark, and it will be just out of the way for people to cease haranguing us about their daughters. Perhaps they still might, but they will get the hint soon enough.

But do you remember? I do, every detail in perfect clarity. Mutual friends who bailed on us, leaving us in that pub, quite alone in that crowded room - you looked at me, quite shy, and told me you admired my work, had heard it oft praised by professors. I remember thinking you had the nicest smile, with the deepest dimple to go along with it. We talked throughout dinner, and it flew by - you were from Wokingham, wanted to travel, and could play Franz Berwald, a composer we both felt severely underrated in his lifetime.

The following week, I was working in the darkroom when a sudden knock on the door startled me; Professor Wilkinson knew my hours and trusted me enough with the films not to disturb me, and not many students milled around the corridors at this hour. I blinked owlishly as the door opening let in a sudden flood of light, you standing framed in it; you had not ever looked so angelic as you did at that moment.

"Am I interrupting?" you enquired. "Boris said I would most probably find you here. I wanted to catch you before the term hols. I wondered if you would look this article over; you are the only one I know who appreciates Berwald as much as I do. But if you are in the middle of something-"

"No, no," I protested. "I should probably thank you for the distraction - I end up working later hours than I should, and have missed meals many a time. Do come in."

You seemed to value my opinion on the piece, even if I reminded you several times that my speciality was not journalism. "Is this your work?" you asked, eventually. "May I-"

You were looking over at the table where my personal photography lay. I wondered why this in particular had caught your eye, out of all the professional shots that littered the room: these had grabbed your attentions, the ones near and dear to me. The smile of a friend, the waddling ducks that lived over by the huge lake. I had never shown these to anyone, they were personal, precious, but something made me say: "It is nothing much, but go ahead."

You smiled down at them. "Oh, but these are wonderful. Oh! I love this" - you held up one of the sun setting over the steps of the Library - "the colour, the time. It says so much."

"It is one of my favourites," I confessed, surprised. You dimpled at me, and fiddled with your olive green gloves thoughtfully.

"Were you about to have dinner?"

"At Pemberton's."

"Ah! we may be able to do better than that, Phil," you exclaimed. "If you are amenable, that is."

It appeared I was.

And over the next few months we saw a great deal of each other and I slowly started realising that what I had started to feel for you was not merely affectionate camaraderie, but in fact went much further - a fact that filled me with the deepest anguish. For you were engaged to be married, in a way that had been planned since birth by your mothers - and you liked her well enough, and had known her since childhood. In this way the rest of our days at University played out - me constantly torn between the worst agony as I contemplated a future without you, and excruciating ecstasy at the smallest things: you smiling at me from across a room, or laying your head upon my shoulder when it was the two of us, alone.

One memory that stands out to me in the starkest detail is on the snowiest day in the history of England. We woke up early to take a walk through the abandoned wing of Wexerley Hall. You had your hat on, and your arm brushed mine; I wished to do nothing but draw you to me and keep you close, to warm you as your very presence did me. You lay in the snow and said with some wistfulness, "I could stay here forever."

You were a vision, a snow angel brought to life. Oh! - how you looked. My heart, aflame with indescribable emotion. I lay down next to you. An ill-advised confession trembled at the tip of my tongue. I stayed silent.

Soon enough, however, graduation was fast approaching; it was a mere matter of weeks nigh, when you came to my room.

"Mother wants me to move back to Berkshire, and take up a job at the local paper," you said. "She wants us - to announce the engagement as quickly as possible."

In this carefully indifferent tone, it would be easy enough to believe you did not mind this arrangement much. In the past two years, however, I had studied enough on the subject of Daniel Howell to know to ask:

"And what do you wish?"

You coloured suddenly. You mumbled some reply and shook your head, but I pressed you on the matter. I was now possessed of that cruelest demon, that little, shining sliver of hope. I had seen the blush that suffused your cheeks, spread over the curve of your neck.

In the end you spoke to my slippers. "I wish to stay in this city." A mumbled, "With you," I could hardly catch, but the effect these words had on me was extraordinary. Where before there had been the gloomiest of rainclouds, now sunlight threatened to break through and threatened to overwhelm me. I turned swiftly away that you could not see the encompassing joy on my features.

"And you?" you asked, lowly.

"I wish the same," I replied. _Coward!_ I scolded myself; it was now or never.

"But I must confess something to you," I continued, with new resolve. "And no doubt it will horrify and repulse you, and I would not blame you. And I would never seek to lose your friendship, but I understand it to be a possible natural consequence. But speak I must."

Where before a flush had stained your lovely skin, you now went white. "Pray tell," you implored. "Phil, do - I cannot bear the anticipation."

Perhaps it was my name falling from your lips. I said, "My feelings for you run deeper than you can imagine. I - I cannot bear to lose you, Dan." It was not pretty speech, but I could say no more.

I had expected shock, fury, disgust. You storming from my room, never to return. Im the best case scenario of the fantasies that constantly plagued my waking and sleeping hours, you cast your lashes low, murmured that you were flattered by my attentions.

Never could I have imagined your true response: I stumbled back into the wall with the force with which you flew at me. Your eyes were bright and happy - _happy!_ God in his perfect omniscience could not have dreamt up a more complete heaven for me. You said my name as if it was _I_ who had made you the happiest being on Earth. And then your lips. And then your lips.

You followed me where I went. Your mother, I fear, is still recovering. And one day - soon, dearest, soon - we will have that little house you long for, and it will be ours and ours only. I can only hope to make you as completely content and blissful as you continue to make me.

In a while I will rouse you and we will get dressed for dinner, and you will smile at me in a crowded room and I will be in ecstasy. For today, of course, is the blessed, fortuitous one upon which I met you, those years ago. I remain,

forever yours,

Phil Lester

 

*******

Presently I folded up the paper, quietly replaced the tin lid. I went down and answered his telegram in the affirmative. My dear wife returned a short while later; I spoke nothing of what I had read.

On Sunday Phil came for tea and cakes; Cornelia was pleased to hear he and Dan had settled into their new abode well, and between the two of them a visit was arranged somewhere in the following week. I proceeded to walk him out, the tin box safely under his arm: generally worthless, utterly irreplaceable, he had described it.

"Phil," I ventured. He turned to me from where he had been admiring our hydrangeas.

"Martyn," my brother responded.

I found that I had not the words. I had wanted to speak of how I would love him bar nothing, how sorry I was that he had had to go it alone all this time. That he would always, in me, have a trusted friend and loyal brother. I realised I needed to voice none of this. "Send Dan my warmest regards."

Phil looked me over with a quick and keen eye. He knew in that instant that I had noticed, or read something in that box that incriminated him profoundly. I did not want to keep it from him. And perhaps he had almost wished it so. My little brother, grown into a fine man.

"I will, Martyn."

I stepped forward and grasped him firmly. When we broke apart, I was unsurprised to feel a wetness on my cheek. Perhaps on his too, for he was hurrying to be off, calling out that he would see us Thursday.

Dusk gathered around me. I went inside, and slipped an arm about my wife, and kissed the crown of her head.

"Phil looks well," she remarked.

"Indeed he does," agreed I.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah this was fun as hell...........I'm on tumblr as snsknene


End file.
